John Tyler (1790-1862) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the tenth president of the United States. His presidency was a tumultuous one – initially elected as vice president, he came to office after the death of his predecessor, William Henry Harrison (1773-1841), leading political opponents to refer to him as 'His Accidency'. After vetoing two bills that would establish a national bank, he was exiled from the Whig Party, leaving him politically isolated. Hoping to save his sinking popularity, he turned the focus of his administration toward the annexation of Texas, which was ultimately achieved in 1845. After his single term in office, he supported the South during the sectional crisis that preceded the American Civil War (1861-1865). When Virginia voted to secede from the Union, Tyler was elected to the Confederate Congress, but he was yet to take his seat when he died in January 1862.
Early Life & Career
John Tyler was born on 29 March 1790 on Greenway Plantation, a 1,200-acre estate built by his father in Charles City County, Virginia. He came from a wealthy, slave-holding family that could trace its roots back to the earliest English settlement of Virginia. His father, John Tyler Sr., was a prominent planter and public official; a friend and colleague of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the elder Tyler had served as Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates in the 1780s and would later become governor of Virginia from 1808 to 1811. His mother, Mary Marot Armistead Tyler, also came from a wealthy Virginian family; tragically, she died of a stroke in 1797, when Tyler was only 7 years old. Growing up on the plantation with his two brothers and five sisters, Tyler was a sickly child, thin and prone to diarrhea. At the age of 12, he entered the College of William and Mary. He graduated in 1807, after which he began reading law under the supervision of his father. In 1809, he was admitted to the Virginia bar; still only 19 years old, he was technically too young to be admitted, but the admitting judge overlooked this qualification.
In December 1811, Tyler followed in his father's footsteps when he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, beginning the first of five consecutive one-year terms. By the end of his first term, he had begun to develop some of the political convictions he would carry with him throughout his career, such as his strong support of states' rights and an aversion to national banks. He supported the War of 1812 (1812-1815) against the United Kingdom and even raised a militia company, called the Charles City Rifles, to defend Richmond in the event of a British attack; in 1813, when it became clear no such attack was forthcoming, the company disbanded. The year 1813 saw two major developments in Tyler's personal life. The first was the death of his father on 6 January, after which he inherited Greenway Plantation as well as 13 enslaved African Americans. The second was his marriage to Letitia Christian on 29 March. Letitia's parents had died shortly before the marriage, leaving the newlywed couple with large inheritances from both sides of the family. The marriage would ultimately produce nine children, seven of whom survived childhood.
In 1816, Tyler won a special election to fill a vacant seat in the US House of Representatives. In Congress, many of his positions were guided by a strict constructionist interpretation of the US Constitution. For instance, he opposed appropriating federal funds for internal improvement projects such as ports, canals, and roadways because he believed the federal government had no power to sign off on such ventures. Similarly, he opposed the Second Bank of the United States because he saw it as a corrupt institution that wielded too much power. In 1818, he joined several of his colleagues in denouncing General Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) for his actions in Spanish Florida, which included the illegal executions of two British subjects – while Tyler admitted that he admired Jackson's character, he could not condone his actions. In 1820, Tyler reluctantly voted for the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Missouri into the Union as a 'slave state' in exchange for Maine's entry as a 'free state' as well as the prohibition of slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel. He would later express regret for voting for the compromise, believing that it only enflamed the sectional divide between North and South over the question of slavery.
Opposition to Jackson
Tyler did not seek re-election to Congress in 1821, citing poor health. He returned to Virginia but was unable to abstain from public life for too long. In 1823, he returned to the Virginia House of Delegates and, in 1825, was elected governor of Virginia, serving two single-year terms. In October 1829, he participated in a convention to revise the state constitution, voting against many of the proposed democratic changes that would take power away from the eastern elite; the revised state constitution, ratified in 1830, did not include any of the reforms that Tyler and his voting bloc had opposed. In 1827, Tyler was sent back to Washington, this time as a US Senator. He reluctantly supported the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson in 1828, hoping that Jackson would not spend as much federal money on internal improvements as his opponent, incumbent President John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), already had. "Turning on him," Tyler said of Jackson, "I may at least indulge in hope; looking on Adams I must despair" (quoted in Crapol, 41). Jackson, however, would give Tyler ample cause to despair. After his victory in the election, Jackson rewarded many of his friends and followers with offices; Tyler condemned the new president's spoils system as an "electioneering weapon" and voted against most of Jackson's nominations.
Tyler was further alienated from Jackson by his handling of the Nullification Crisis (1832-33). The crisis began when the state of South Carolina asserted its right to declare a federal law – in this case, the unpopular 'Tarriff of Abominations' – null and void within its own borders. Jackson met the threat of nullification by signing the Force Bill, which authorized the federal government to use military action to enforce its laws, causing the South Carolina nullifiers to back down. Tyler, as a supporter of states' rights, sympathized with South Carolina and was the only US senator to vote against the Force Bill. He also opposed the so-called Bank War, in which the Jackson administration sought to kill the Second Bank of the United States (BUS). Though he certainly had no love for the national bank, Tyler viewed Jackson's plan to transfer federal funds from the BUS to state-chartered 'pet' banks as an abuse of power by the executive branch. In 1834, he broke with Jackson's Democratic Party for good, voting for censure resolutions against the president. In doing so, he cast his lot in with the Whig Party, a loose coalition of anti-Jacksonian elements in government centered around the leadership of Henry Clay (1777-1852).
In 1835, Democrats took control of the Virginia legislature. They passed a motion demanding that Tyler rescind his vote for the censure of Jackson. Rather than acquiesce, Tyler resigned from the US Senate in March 1836, increasing his profile in the Whig Party. This enabled him to run for vice president that year as the running mate of Whig candidate Hugh L. White. The Whigs were not yet a unified party, however, and fielded four separate candidates in the US presidential election of 1836; partly due to this disunity, they lost the election to the Democratic candidate Martin Van Buren (1782-1862), Jackson's vice president and handpicked successor. But shortly after Van Buren took office, the nation was struck by an economic depression known as the Panic of 1837. The Whigs seized on the opportunity to blame the Democrats for the crisis, a message that resonated with voters. In December 1839, Tyler was again chosen as the party's vice-presidential candidate, the hope being that he would appeal to Southern voters. This time, Tyler shared the ticket with William Henry Harrison, a war hero celebrated for his victory at the Battle of Tippecanoe (7 Nov 1811). Exciting voters with torchlight parades, dazzling speeches, and memorable campaign songs – including the famous 'Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!' – Harrison easily won the election of 1840, with the Whigs winning majorities in both the House and the Senate.
Presidency
On 4 March 1841, Harrison delivered his inauguration address, speaking for nearly two hours in the cold without an overcoat. The next few weeks were spent meeting with a plethora of office seekers and Whig politicians. Exhausted and overworked, Harrison fell ill with pneumonia and died on 4 April, exactly a month after taking office. Since no US president had died in office before, this sparked something of a constitutional crisis. The Constitution stipulated that, in the event of the death, resignation, or incapability of the president, the 'powers and duties' of that office would fall upon the vice president – what was unclear was whether the vice president ascended to the presidency in that situation or merely remained 'acting president'. After members of Harrison's cabinet tried to deny him the office, Tyler insisted that he was president in his own right, moved into the White House, and swore the oath of office on 6 April 1841. Thus, Tyler became the tenth president of the United States, although his legitimacy was constantly questioned by political opponents, who referred to him as 'His Accidency'. Nevertheless, the question of succession was resolved; it became accepted that a vice president would succeed an incapacitated president to the office, a procedure that was finally codified in 1967, with the 25th Amendment.
When Tyler began his presidency, therefore, he was already on thin ice – it would not take long for him to make even more enemies. Henry Clay, the leader of the Whig Party, had hoped to control the Harrison administration from the shadows, so that he could finally implement his American System, an economic plan that relied on internal improvements and national banks. Tyler, of course, hated both those institutions and was not about to let himself be controlled by Clay. So, when Congress passed a bill that would revive the Bank of the United States, he vetoed it. After getting over the initial shock that their own president would veto a bill so instrumental to their party platform, the congressional Whigs put together a second bill that they believed would be more acceptable to Tyler. This time, the president waited ten days before vetoing the bill once again, effectively killing its chances of ever being passed. Enraged, Clay encouraged each of Tyler's cabinet secretaries to resign, hoping to pressure Tyler himself into resigning. Except for Secretary of State Daniel Webster (1782-1852), who was negotiating an important deal with the UK, Tyler's Whig cabinet members entered his office one by one to tender their resignations. Tyler, however, stood his ground and refused to resign. On 13 September 1841, the Whigs expelled him from their party, the only time in US history that a president has been forced out of his own party.
Now politically isolated, it seemed as though Tyler's presidency was on its last legs. Congress made it difficult for him to replenish his cabinet with his own nominees, and, in July 1842, impeachment proceedings were begun in the House on the basis that Tyler had overstepped his authority with his overuse of the veto power. To make matters worse, First Lady Letitia Tyler died of a stroke on 10 September 1842, isolating the president in his personal life as well. But Tyler was not about to admit defeat. In 1842, his administration achieved several important successes – through the efforts of Webster it settled the boundary dispute between Maine and Canada in the Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842), it bloodlessly stifled the Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island (1842), and it brought an end to the Second Seminole War (1835-1842) in Florida. But despite these accomplishments, Tyler remained ostracized in Washington. He knew that if he wanted to save his presidency – and perhaps pave the way for a successful run in 1844 – he needed a major political victory. The issue he decided to focus on was the annexation of Texas.
In its revolution of 1835-36, Texas had declared its independence from Mexico. However, many Texans wished to join the United States, a desire shared by many Southern Democrats, who saw the acquisition of Texas as a tool to expand the institution of slavery. In 1843, Tyler forced the resignation of Secretary of State Webster, a vocal opponent of annexation, and replaced him with the more agreeable Abel P. Upshur. Together, Tyler and Upshur quietly opened negotiations with Texas, promising military protection from Mexico in exchange for beginning the process of annexation. In the meantime, Upshur began planting stories that Britain had designs on Texas, hoping to turn anti-British sentiment into support for Texas' admission into the Union. On 27 February 1844, an annexation treaty was finally agreed on. The next day, Tyler, Upshur, and 400 guests celebrated this treaty with a cruise down the Potomac River aboard the newly built USS Princeton. In the evening, one of the ship's gigantic naval guns – nicknamed 'the Peacemaker' – exploded, killing six people including Upshur, Navy Secretary Thomas Walker Gilmer, and Tyler's enslaved body servant, Armistead, and injuring several others. The president himself, who had been below decks during the explosion, was unharmed.
To help see the annexation treaty through Congress, Tyler replaced Upshur with John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), notorious for his support for states' rights and the expansion of slavery. Calhoun's involvement led many Americans to connect Texas' admission into the Union with slavery, leading Congress to reject the annexation treaty in June 1844. Defeated once again and spurned by both the Whig and Democratic parties, Tyler decided to withdraw his name from the presidential race in August 1844 – the fact that his supporters had founded a third party, the Tyler Party, had done little to help his prospects. In February 1845, during the lame-duck period of his presidency, Congress passed a joint resolution to annex Texas, which Tyler signed only a few days before leaving office in March. Texas would ultimately enter the Union as the 28th state on 29 December 1845, a major cause of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848).
Post-Presidency
After leaving Washington, Tyler returned to his Virginia plantation of Walnut Grove with his new wife – in June 1844, he had married the beautiful Julia Gardener, the 24-year-old daughter of a congressman killed in the Princeton explosion. The couple would have seven children. From his retirement, Tyler kept tabs on national politics, frequently commenting on the growing sectional divide between the 'slave states' of the South and 'free states' of the North; Tyler stood behind the Southern states and voiced his support for allowing the institution of slavery to expand into the West. He supported the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, as well as the Dred Scott Decision in 1857. After the victory of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) in the US presidential election of 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union, with many other Southern states threatening to follow suit. While Tyler hoped that the Union could be preserved, he found secession preferable to any violations of states' rights (by which, of course, he meant slavery).
In February 1861, Tyler was elected as the presiding member of the Washington Peace Conference, a meeting of 131 leading American politicians who hoped to de-escalate the conflict and avoid civil war by reaching a compromise. Although he had accepted a leading role at the conference, Tyler seemed unwilling to reach a settlement and ultimately rejected the conference's final resolutions. That same month, Tyler was elected to oversee the Virginia Secession Convention. On 17 April, after the attack on Fort Sumter kicked off the American Civil War, Tyler voted along with the majority to secede from the Union. He helped negotiate the terms for Virginia's entry into the Confederate States of America and, in June, was elected to the Provisional Confederate Congress. He had yet to take his seat in the Confederate House of Representatives when, on 12 January 1862, he fainted after complaining of dizziness. He died less than a week later, on 18 January 1862, at the age of 71.
